Fomalhaut is a class A star approximately twenty-five light years from Earth, in the constellation of Piscis Austrinus. After the longest journey in human history, mankind discovers that it has successfully destroyed the only sentient race it has ever encounted - the former inhabitants of a desert world orbiting the young, bright star. But why? The consequences of this act explode across time and space, destroying the lives of those unfortunate enough to be inadvertently caught in its terrible wake.

Three decades later, xeno-archaeologists studying the dead world, accidentally discover the weapon that destroyed the alien race amongst the ruins, a battered box the size and shape of a child's coffin. News of its existence spreads before the military can spirit the deadly artefact away. It is coveted by a dangerous socio-pathic career criminal, who will stop at nothing to possess it. His assault on the ship transporting the device back to Earth has dire consequences for the lead xeno-archaeologists Enola Saville, her self-made industrial magnate lover, and the crew of the independent freight transporter The Solidrus, all of whom suffer the murderous fallout of merely being in the wrong place at exactly the wrong time.

On a future Earth and in a solar system teeming with humanities colonists, the haunted survivors struggle to come to terms with their grief and absorb the trauma into the shattered remnants of their lives. As they struggle to rebuild broken, interrupted lives, answers are found and a plan is hatched to transform the poisonous chaos into some semblance of positive order.

Meanwhile, back in the Fomalhaut system, dark secrets including the true nature and horror of the vile weapon are revealed!

Twenty-five light years, two stellar systems, one destiny.

The story may be set in a distant solar system and equally distant Earth, in a future teeming with new technologies, populated by a human race unified by a common purpose, born of a shared apocalypse, but at its heart is a very human story of tragedy, loss and overwhelming grief.

Human society may have been re-forged by adversity, and it may be viewed though the distorting lens of future technology, but society as a structure has survived in a way we would find disappointingly familiar, even if the extrapolated culture is alien to 21st century eyes.

The novel also examines the human condition at a micro level through the eyes of those caught in the wake of violent genocide. Through their personal journeys we come to understand that acts of violence and inhuman brutality do not exist in isolation. Instead the voids created are forever tainted by the echoes of trauma. Sometimes the mental wounds created can never heal, instead they bleed the stolen innocence of the victims.

...and a technology that evolved to bring us closer together can sometimes serve to highlight the distance and solitude between us.

“We found the secret chambers almost by accident!” the thin woman whispers excitedly, her hand over her mouth to prevent lip reading. She glances furtively around the bustling recreation deck, checking for any eavesdropping before continuing. The dim lighting helps to conceal them in their booth. “It still contained their technology.” “Yeah,” her partner continues, explaining the story further to Enola, “we accidentally found a hidden door in the wall of the great chamber in the main tower.” “At Gargantuan?” Enola asks, using the human name for the alien city. “Show me,” she asks impatiently, pointing at her eye augment. “I can’t,” the woman adds, “they wiped it from us. Said it was a security risk.” She shakes her head. “It felt like a violation, someone taking part of your life like that.” “What gives them the right?” Enola consoles her. “Look,” the thin woman tells Enola, pulling a rolled-up piece of ipaper from her breast pocket. She opens it, tensions it and begins to manipulate the controls. When she locates what she’s searching for she turns it towards Enola. “These chemical markings were on the walls of the smaller outer chamber.” The ipaper shows a low resolution, low frame rate version of a chemical analysis display. One large smear next to a smaller one, lies atop a triangle of smears. A list of proteins present slides down the page next to the video, all of alien origin. "It’s a different configuration to anything we’ve seen before." “You said the smaller outer chamber?” Enola asks. “What was in the inner chamber?” The other woman shook her head quickly. “The military declared it off limits instantly,” the man begins to explain. “They called it a quarantine zone. Virtually no one got in,” he continues. Enola bangs the table in annoyance. “Some of our guys did get a look inside,” she states. Enola holds her hand up to silence her, “Wait for the comms tube. It’s due any second.” Enola glances around, taking a sip form her drink. “Everyone will be distracted,” she adds. The others furtively glance silently around the recreation desk, waiting for a sign that everyone is receiving the latest updates from Earth’s solar system. Somewhere just beyond the orbit of Fomalhaut Three a sleek, shiny torpedo drops out of NeitherSpace and instantly begins to transmit yottabyte upon yottabyte of data, at fantastic speeds, over a myriad of streams. In the rec deck everyone stops what they are doing and instantly becomes entranced by the updates broadcast into their heads; emails, video, pictures, web sites, music, movies and books pour into their augment’s data stores. In data centers around the system, local caches of Earth’s solar system data stores update. The people in the bar smile, laugh, even cry, at the hidden messages from home. In their rapture the one thing that none of them are doing, is paying any attention to three archeologists sat at a discreet table in the corner. Enola waves the other woman on. She glances around, “Is everyone shut down?” They take a second to power down their augments, not wanting to be overheard. She covers her hand with her mouth, to hide her words. “They saw multiple skeletons. One of them was enormous. Like nothing we’ve seen so far.” “Really?” Enola seems genuinely taken aback. “Do you see what this means?” he adds. “This proves that the military have tampered with the whole thing.” He licks his lips and leans forward, closer to Enola. “This proves what we thought all along. They’ve already removed all the important artifacts.” Enola raises her voice slightly, “Don’t they know that these finds belongs to everyone?” “We know,” the thin woman agrees, resting the tips of her fingers on Enola’s hand. “We all feel the same,” she consoles. “I bet the military know exactly what happened to them,” he adds bitterly. “You know we’re only here to please the All-Earth Council,” Enola concedes. “Make it look to the folks back home as if the military are sharing the planet,” she snipes bitterly, taking a sip on her drink. “And it’ll only get worse when they forget all about us,” the man adds. Enola gave him a perplexed look. “Some of the new technicians told us that the land auctions have already begun back home,” the woman explains. “Already?” Enola asks incredulously. “The corporations are falling over themselves to throw cash at this place.” Enola slowly shakes her head, considering the consequences. “Before we know it this place’ll be called ‘NuEarth’, and everyone will be trampling all over our digs with size twelve boots.” He bangs his glass on the table. “Except by then our sites will be called ‘AlienDisney’.” “It won’t come to that,” Enola assures them. She looks into their skeptical eyes. “Will it?” “You’ve been here too long Enola,” he tells her. “You don’t know the mood back home. No one cares about the aliens and what happened to them anymore.” “That planet,” the woman adds, pointing out of the observation port below them, “will be crawling with billions of homo sapiens, before we get anywhere near to finding out what happened to the indigenous inhabitants of Fomalhaut Three.” “I still don’t know,” Enola questions, shaking her head in disbelief. “This was an alien race for Christ’s sake. Someone must care?” “Not back home,” the thin woman tells her categorically, “not with all the problems of Earth. Most people are too poor to care, and this all sounds too much like Mars. They just see millions of undeveloped square miles and the promise of jobs.” “And certainly no one cares here,” he adds sarcastically, gesturing at the roughnecks and off-duty military milling around the deck. They look as if they care more about getting drunk and surviving another day. He powers up his augments, glancing at the overlaid time in his vision, “We should be somewhere else,” he states. “We’re supposed to be packing our equipment for the elevator drop planet side. We’re leaving Stallitano in two hours.” Enola nods in agreement. “Thanks for telling me the news so soon after you got back.” “Anytime,” he answers, draining the rest of his drink as he rises from the table. “We’ll see you soon,” the woman adds, shutting down her ipaper AI, rolling it up, and also rising from her chair. Enola powers up her various augments and implants. “Gotta go,” he finishes, helping the thin woman from her seat. Enola watches them leave the table and head quickly for the recreation deck's exit. They stride through the open hatch without looking back. She lets her gaze drift through the view deck below her feet, watching the endless, infinity of space drift slowly past the reinforced window. Every few minutes, the glorious explosion of colour that is the planet Fomalhaut Three, make its ponderous journey through her field of vision, obscuring all but the brighter stars as it slides by. She grips her cold glass tightly every time it comes around. It was the reason that she is out here, so far away from home, at the farthest reaches of mankind’s expansions. She suddenly laughs softly to herself. Then, without knowing exactly why, she calls a picture of Hank into augmented vision. The planet below her - was that even the right direction? - is the reason why Hank and her had first met. The reason why they were all here at all. The reason why they had fallen in love in the first place. Ultimately though, the planet beneath her was also the reason why they would spend the next few months apart. She became aware of a slowly growing speck of light, as it fell toward her, towards the station. At first she had convinced herself that it was no more than just another star. But, on each carefully controlled spin that the station took on its engineered axis, each time it came back into view, it was larger and brighter than before. Until now she could almost make out the shape of the shuttle as it sped towards her. She checks the time in her own vision augments, it was right on schedule. She had hoped that it was going to be early. That she could see him that much sooner. But the military ran its shuttles with the sort of precision that the mining and scientific transporters could never match. She sips at her drink. Its artificial, spartan taste reminds her just how many times it had been recycled. She checks the time again. Docking, customs, security and acclimatization would mean that he was still more than an hour away. She glances around the recreation area. The weary bodies milling around are a mixture of off-duty personnel, spacers awaiting their departures and military enduring what must surely be the universe’s worst shore leave. She found herself looking towards the circular entrance, willing another of her small band of colleagues to walk in. But she knows that she is the only one of her kind without something to do or somewhere to be. All of the others are waiting to go back planet side, on the shuttle’s return journey - to carry on the work that Hank and her led. That he, for the foreseeable future at least, would carry on without her.

Fomalhaut Debris Ring image (top banner) by NASA/Hubble.This file is in the public domain because it was created by NASA and ESA. Hubble material is copyright-free and may be freely used as in the public domain without fee, on the condition that NASA and ESA is credited as the source of the material. The material was created for NASA by Space Telescope Science Institute and for ESA by the Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre under Contract NAS5-26555.Copyright statement at hubblesite.org or copyright statement at spacetelescope.org.

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